Boston Scream Murder

by Ginger Bolton

  “Did Patty know about Rich and Terri’s relationship?”

  “I don’t think so. When I applied for the loan, I wasn’t sure there was more to the relationship than, I don’t know, the way people glance at each other when they’re interested and don’t know if the other one feels the same way. However, I learned after Patty’s death that Rich had been having an affair. I don’t think many people heard about that, or about Terri being gone for a long lunch hour the same day that Rich didn’t return from lunch at all, the same day that Patty capsized in the frigid water. I think Patty’s death devastated Rich and ended his affair. Terri left the Fallingbrook Mercantile Bank almost immediately after Patty died, and I didn’t see her for years except for a few times when I went up to Gooseleg. Whenever she saw me walk past the bank up there, she waved, so she remembered me from the two meetings I had with Rich and the time they came to my house.” He bit into the jack-o’-lantern donut. “I like this combination of pumpkin, orange, and spices.” With apparent concentration, he set the donut on his plate. “On Tuesday morning, Terri was at Rich’s. She went out in one of his canoes.”

  “A red fiberglass one with wooden gunwales?”

  “Yes. You probably saw it.”

  I nodded. “What other canoes did he have?”

  “Only one other, an old aluminum one.”

  “The one that his wife took out the day she drowned?”

  He squirmed uncomfortably on his chair. “I don’t know if it was the same one, but it was similar to it.”

  “Sorry for interrupting.” I tried to sound casually interested. “What did Terri do when she went out in the red canoe?”

  “She saw me on my beach, landed her canoe, and got out to talk to me. She apologized for not having said or done anything when Rich turned me down for that mortgage and ended up buying the cottage himself. So that’s why she always waved at me.” He tore the remains of the donut in half. One of the candy corn eyes landed with a clink on his plate. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’d almost forgotten the details. I hadn’t been sure what I was going to do with a cottage on the same lake as my house, anyway. It had been a spur-of-the-moment idea. Later I was glad that Rich tricked me out of that cottage. If I want to go canoeing, I can leave from my own dock, and I don’t need the additional maintenance, upkeep, and taxes from another property.” His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the glass covering the pink-frosted donut painted on the table. “Also, I could not have kept a piano in a poorly insulated cottage to be affected by heat and humidity, and I spend hours every day at the piano. I’d have had to canoe back across the lake to play the piano. I need to have it tuned often enough in a house where I can do a reasonable job of controlling the environment. After Rich bought the cottage, he had it properly insulated. It was probably a good investment for him, but I couldn’t have afforded to do everything he had done to it.”

  “Let me guess. His cottage wasn’t a Cape Cod when you looked at it.”

  A humorous glint in his eyes, he aimed an index finger at me. “You guessed right. It was a plain wood-sided cabin with a sloping roof and a chimney. He added white siding, shutters, and dormers, and as I said, insulation. I think he updated some of the plumbing, too. His not approving that second mortgage wasn’t a big deal. It was actually a blessing.” Frowning, he sipped at his espresso. He put the small cup down. “Patty loved that cottage. She preferred it to their house, which she found too cold and large, so that was another reason I was glad that Rich acquired the cottage. Patty could be, as she put it, ‘out in nature.’ She also loved canoeing, no matter what. She could have driven or walked to their cottage, but she preferred canoeing there. I always wondered if Patty’s last canoe trip was to go enjoy the afternoon in that cottage. If I had bought it, I hope I would have known better than to go there by canoe when it wasn’t safe.”

  “Do you canoe often on Lake Fleekom?” I was afraid I was going to get myself into dangerous territory and have to admit to my late-night kayaking, and worse, snooping near his house, but I wanted to hear what he’d say.

  “I do, day or night, hot or cold, as long as there’s no ice. Thursday night, I went out in the moonlight. The police had asked me if I knew where Terri was, and I was surprised to hear that she’d been missing since a few hours after you found Rich’s body. You wisely kept her from seeing him and sent her up to sit near Rich’s deck, and I went with her. She told me that she was afraid of her ex-boyfriend, that scruffy guy who tried to crash Rich’s party. She said he had rented Rich’s cottage and had flown into a rage when Rich kicked him and his friends out. On Thursday night it occurred to me that Terri might be hiding from the ex-boyfriend in the cottage, so I went out into the fog and canoed over there.”

  “Was she there?”

  “I looked around with a flashlight and tried calling her name, but I didn’t see evidence of anyone inside the building and no one answered when I knocked on the back door, the one that Rich and Patty always used. A rattletrap of a vehicle was coming up the road, and I went back to my canoe and paddled away. I didn’t have my phone with me. I was planning, when I got home, to call the police and have them check the cottage, but when I arrived at my dock, Terri was there waiting for me. She’d noticed me out on the lake and wanted to talk to me because she was scared. She thought she’d seen and heard her ex’s pickup truck go rattling toward the cottage.”

  I commented, “It sounds like it was a good thing you didn’t hang around at Rich’s cottage.”

  “I think so, too, but the ex was probably only looking for Terri. Still, I wouldn’t want to tangle with him. We’re about the same size, but he’s younger. Plus”—he flexed his fingers—“I always have to consider my hands. Not because I still need to earn my living with them, but because I can’t imagine not being able to play the piano. I don’t know what I’d do.” He had a nicely boyish grin. “Besides canoeing. When I heard that truck approach and slow down near Rich’s cottage, slipping off in my canoe seemed like the best plan. I found Terri shivering on my dock and looking for reassurance, if not outright protection. I offered to let her spend the rest of the night at my place, but she turned me down. She’d been barricading herself in a room in Rich’s house and planned to keep doing that. I told her to call me if her ex showed up at Rich’s house, and she said she would. She ducked under the crime scene tape and ran back to his deck. I heard a car drive out along the road shortly afterward, and then I heard the noisy pickup truck speed past. About six in the morning, a car left Rich’s. I figured that was Terri heading for work, and that she was fine.”

  “She was here a little while ago. She seemed okay, but grieving. Her ex hadn’t found her.”

  “Good.” The word had a solid, satisfied ring to it.

  “It was nice of you to try to help her. Were you home when Patty drowned?”

  “I was driving back from Madison after a concert.” He shuddered. “I arrived home late that night and found spotlights shining on the lake and rescuers attempting to find her. It was horrible. I wish I had been home when she went out that last time in her canoe. I might have been at the piano. I might have seen her launching her canoe. I might have convinced her not to do such a foolhardy thing. They think she capsized because she was trying to save an animal, maybe a dog or a deer, which I could easily believe because it was the sort of thing she would have done, but whatever she might have been going after, it survived and she didn’t.” Pain crossed his face. “If I’d seen her struggling, maybe I could have gone out and rescued her. Or phoned for help.”

  Feeling Hank’s pain about the loss of his high school friend, I repeated what Brent and I had told each other when talking about the night that Alec died. “There was probably nothing you could have done.”

  Pinching his lips together and shaking his head, he didn’t look entirely convinced. I knew that feeling, too.

  Did he also, at least partly, blame Rich for the loss of his old friend? Maybe that, combined with a
nger over the financial scam, had caused him to swing that skillet at Rich’s head.

  His hands were big with long, slender, strong-looking fingers. He was big, too. He had the size and strength to wield the skillet that had killed Rich. Maybe he knew about the skillet, either because he had seen it in the cottage as part of the furnishings when he was considering buying the cottage or because he had visited Rich and Patty there after Rich bought it. Was his comment about not harming his hands a way of trying to make me believe that he wouldn’t pick up a heavy cast-iron skillet and swing it at someone?

  Although Hank had seemed glad to hear that Terri was all right and had come to Deputy Donut that morning, I guessed that he already knew she was fine. I also guessed she had sent him to talk to me. He could have been the person she’d been phoning as she left.

  Almost as if he’d read my thoughts, Hank leaned toward me. “I don’t want you to think there was anything going on between Terri and me, but we were together Tuesday morning, quite innocently, from when she left Rich, who was alive and calling goodbye to her—I heard him—until she canoed back from my place to his.”

  I sat perfectly still and tried not to let doubt show on my face. Terri had told me that she’d been with Hank only part of that time, and that she’d gone birding in a canoe after talking to Hank.

  Hank didn’t seem to notice my suspicion-motivated stillness. He went on, “After I convinced her that I didn’t care about Rich pulling that stunt with the cottage, we sat talking, mostly about the lake and about the birds she might see on it. She said it was time for her to go back to his place, and she canoed off in that direction. Moments later, she was yelling. She sounded upset, so I dashed over to see what was wrong, and you were there.”

  “When you and Terri were talking, did you hear or see anyone at or near Rich’s?”

  “I heard a truck that Terri said belonged to the caterers. It left, and then Terri and I went inside for coffee, so I didn’t hear anything else until after she left. I went back outside, and she started yelling. It’s a lucky thing Terri did come over to my place that morning, because she and I were together. Otherwise, she might have been hurt, or the police might suspect one of us of killing Rich.”

  “Lucky,” I agreed. Terri had told me she had sworn Hank to secrecy about their being together that morning, so why was he confessing all of this to a stranger? I didn’t ask, and I refrained from telling him that if he and Terri were going to use each other as alibis, they should tell the same story. Their stories were close, but not close enough.

  If they weren’t together the entire time, either of them could have attacked Rich. They could have worked together whether she spent part of that time birding or not. The hedge between Hank’s and Rich’s properties was substantial, but Hank had been able to push through it when he heard Terri’s raised voice. Hank and Terri could have been peeking through the hedge, with or without Terri’s binoculars. Even if they hadn’t seen the caterers leave, Terri had apparently heard their truck. Terri and Hank could have gone over to Rich’s party tent. Terri could have distracted Rich, allowing Hank to hit him with the skillet. They could have fled and returned separately, seeming innocent, after I discovered Rich’s body. And some of the stains on Hank’s clothes might not have been paint.

  I had already discussed with Brent how Terri could have switched the noticeable red canoe for the aluminum one that blended in with the mist. For all I knew, she could have covered her red hoodie with a gray camo jacket or something similar and joined Hank to attack Rich. After the attack, she could have taken off in the aluminum canoe, hidden it and her camo jacket in the woods, and retrieved the red canoe while Hank stayed in his yard and watched for partygoers, who could become potential suspects, to arrive.

  I wanted to call Brent and let him know that Terri and Hank were telling me stories that might differ from the ones they had told him and Detective Gartborg. But I didn’t want to leap out of my seat and cause Hank to guess that I was suspecting him and Terri of murder.

  Hank tasted the zombie donut. “You folks really know how to make donuts.”

  I thanked him.

  Nina, who had promised to watch my back, came by and asked if she could get Hank anything. I took the opportunity to introduce her to him. He stood, shook her hand, and praised her talent. “Keep following your dream, Nina.” He sounded sincere. Nina and I went back to work.

  Hank finished his donuts and coffee, put cash on the table, and left.

  “I hope he’s not a murderer,” Nina murmured as we cleared tables, “or about to be killed.”

  “Killed?”

  “Rich admired my painting, too, and look what happened to him.”

  I faked a punch at her for teasing me. “I need to call Brent. I’ll be right back.”

  “Ooooh.” Eyes wide, she watched me shut myself into the office with Dep.

  Chapter 27

  In the office Dep was curled on the couch. She stretched, took one look at me, flattened her ears, and scrambled up a carpeted post. I reminded her, “You don’t know how to back down.”

  She leaped to a ramp that took her closer to the ceiling. I picked up my phone and pressed Brent’s speed dial. Dep trotted down one of her stairways, landed on the desk, and rubbed the side of her mouth against the phone.

  I held it next to my ear, out of her reach unless she stood on her hind legs, which she must have decided was too undignified at the moment. Brent’s personal line went to message. One hand on Dep’s warm and furry back, I said into my phone, “Terri Estable, and Rich’s neighbor, Hank, came into our shop today, separately. You might already know this, but they have conflicting stories about where they each were when Rich was killed.” I ended the message with an optimistic, “See you tonight.”

  I looked up from my purring cat. Scott and a couple of his firefighters were coming into the dining room. Cooing goodbyes to Dep, I thrust my phone into my apron pocket and headed toward the front of the shop.

  Scott waved at me and caught sight of Jocelyn. “Welcome back, Jocelyn.”

  She teased, “Why are you wearing your dress uniform, Chief Ritsorf? Is that your Halloween costume?”

  He fingered the shiny brass buttons on his jacket. “I’m in the parade.”

  Looking up into his kind blue eyes, I thought again how perfect he was for Misty. “I thought the parade was for kids.”

  He winked. “Anyone who drives big red trucks counts as a kid.” He ordered deep-fried mozzarella sticks, deep-fried mushrooms, a scare-it cake donut, and a coffee.

  Jocelyn folded her arms. “We need to have a talk about proper nutrition, Chief Ritsorf.”

  Scott burst out laughing. “Watch how you talk to customers. You wouldn’t want Emily and Tom to fire you.”

  “They won’t.” She was right. “You would put out any fires anyway. And it’s my turn to rescue you—from poor nutritional choices.”

  “It’s not your turn, Jocelyn. I never actually rescued you. Besides, I’m going to eat my vegetables. There are carrots in the scare-it cake donut, and I’m going to eat a full serving of mushrooms, too. And the way Tom fries things, they’re never greasy.”

  Smiling, I retreated to the kitchen and helped Tom and Nina make more of the donuts, fritters, and crullers we had designed for Halloween. Graceful as ever, Jocelyn flitted around the dining room serving customers. After Scott and his colleagues left, she was still teasing regulars. They beamed at her.

  She, Tom, Nina, and I made the smaller donuts, crullers, and fritters for the kids we expected later.

  At three, we joined our customers out on the patio to watch little trick-or-treaters parade through Fallingbrook. One of our usual patrons, a grandfather who always sat with the other retired men weekday mornings, arrived and sat at a table close to the sidewalk.

  At the head of the parade, a fleet of pint-sized firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances pedaled past. Some of the vehicles were being helped along by parents and by Scott, Samantha, and other first responders,
all in uniform and on foot. A miniature nurse at the wheel of a firetruck headed for a collision with the curb, but Scott strode to her and nudged her back into the middle of the street. An inflated Tyrannosaurus rex huffed past wedged into a police car that was barely big enough for him—and was definitely not big enough for his tail. A fairy furiously pedaled a farm tractor hauling a trailer behind it. Superheroes, zombies, witches, and a surprisingly tall scarecrow rolled past in other toy cars and trucks. Many of the little vehicles looked vintage, but they were shiny and in apparently perfect condition despite the tendency of some of them to veer off course only to be straightened by attentive and smiling adults. Behind the vehicles, other kids marched, walked, straggled, dawdled, and in one case stood gaping at our colorful donut shop. We saw cheerleaders, lumberjacks, policemen, and a Bride of Frankenstein. A tiny boy wore a realistic firefighter’s outfit, complete with reflective tape.

  The grandfather on our patio pointed at a blue sparkly butterfly. “There’s my granddaughter!” Beside the little butterfly, a smiling woman carried a furry turquoise narwhal. “There’s my grandson!”

  The narwhal wasn’t the only one being carried. There was an infant Green Bay Packer, a sleeping bumblebee, several princesses, and at least two wriggly teddy bears.

  Behind them was a marching band, kid-style. The motley group included Little Red Riding Hood, a long-fanged wolf wearing a bonnet, a sumo wrestler, and a doctor. With great enthusiasm, they beat on toy drums, rattled tambourines, clashed cymbals, tootled into kazoos, and banged sticks together. Three elegant witches wheeled a cauldron in front of them. Something like a kettle drum was apparently inside the cauldron. The witches chanted and boomed on the drum while obviously trying not to giggle.